Assignment: Cleveland
by LJL
Summary: ABANDONED. Willow and Kennedy go to Cleveland to look for new Slayers.
1. Chapter 1

The small group of humans were in serious trouble. They'd gone to the park expecting to dust a couple of vampires, and they'd ended up stumbling on an orgy/feast. If the sights weren't enough to kill them, the ravenous and aroused vampires were.  
As the group fought for its life, several other vamps continued their party. One had a still-human girl, probably about thirteen years old, pinned against the ground. Her shirt was ripped, and he was biting her right above her breast. As he straddled her, he slowly moved his teeth downward, lacerating her skin.  
Another vamp had just turned another girl. They were still in the same pose as they had been before - the struggle. It was no longer a struggle for her life. Now it was a struggle for pleasure.  
Another was draining a young man. He was terrified, and screamed as the vamp twisted. He called out for his mother. The vampire sunk its fangs in deeper.  
The group of young teenage fighters were losing ground. There were only five of them, and they were besieged by no less than eight vampires, all in a frenzy.  
The five were no match for the vampires. Quite suddenly, through the apparently even hand to hand combat, one of the five lost the upper hand. Before anyone knew what was happening, he'd been grabbed and was being drained, quickly and painfully.  
"Mike!" one of the remaining fighters shouted. He glanced at the rest of his friends. They wouldn't survive this if they kept it up. Then he glanced at the several people still being tortured by the hungry vampires. Some were still human - some weren't dead yet.  
Agonizingly, the young man decided that he could do nothing more for them.  
"Fall back!" he shouted. Immediately, his friends broke their fights and ran. He lingered for a moment, to throw a bottle of holy water at one of the feasting vampires. Then he was gone.  
As he fled into the night, Jonathan Banks felt sick to his stomach.  
  
Willow had decided that Cleveland was not to her liking. She'd always been a small town girl - born and raised. Occasional excitement she could handle. This was just too noisy for her - the traffic going by her hotel woke her early every morning.  
She glanced at Kennedy lying beside her. The young Slayer was still asleep. It was nearing eight in the morning. Willow chuckled inaudibly, and her humor translated into magic that changed the color of the ceiling from drab grey to a swirling multicolor.  
Willow smiled at her new ceiling. She'd done that so many times now that Kennedy teased her about it, telling her that the color of their ceiling reflected Willow's mood. Now Kennedy rolled over and smiled, looking at the ceiling. "Happy this morning, honey?" she asked, sweetly.  
Willow punched her. "Your not nearly as cute as you think you are."  
"No, I'm cuter," Kennedy replied, smiling.  
"Bite me," Willow said.  
"Ooh, with pleasure," Kennedy said, grinning maliciously.  
Willow blushed slightly. She wasn't used to having such a 'forward' partner. "Wasn't last night enough?" she asked.  
Kennedy shrugged. "Slayer endurance...I could keep going for a week."  
Willow nodded. "That happened to Buffy once," she said. Kennedy stared. "Well, not a week, exactly, but it was a long time. Like four hours, without a break."  
Kennedy's jaw was hanging open. "She was put under a spell by some rowdy spirits," Willow explained.  
Kennedy still stared, but managed to form a joke. "Hook me up with those spirits."  
Willow shook her head and climbed out of bed. "You wouldn't have liked them so much," she said. "They were all teenagers who were tormented by the head of their group home. They were using Buffy and Riley as a battery to channel themselves into our plane."  
Kennedy climbed out of bed too. "Still doesn't sound that bad. I mean besides the whole tormented teenagers bit, but we deal with stuff like that all the time."  
Willow shook her head again as she dressed. "They were going to keep Buffy and Riley going - you know, until they died."  
Kennedy started to dress as well. "So...death by sex? In case you've never read about other Slayers, that's not such a bad way to go."  
Seeing that she wasn't going to win this one, Willow finished getting dressed in silence. They left the room together and went down to the hotel's kitchen for breakfast.  
They ate briefly and left the building.  
Willow and Kennedy had come to Cleveland on the business of the newly reinstated Watcher's Council, which was being run by Giles from England. They were searching for newly risen Slayers - there were so many of them! Giles had told Willow that Cleveland and its surrounding area would be a difficult assignment - Cleveland was situated on top of another Hellmouth, after all. Willow had lived on a Hellmouth her entire life - so she'd accepted. Some part of her brain had thought that Cleveland would be a lot like Sunnydale, what with the Hellmouth connection.  
She'd been drastically wrong.  
Oh, she was acquainted with the concept of the 'big city' - she'd been to LA several times, after all - but she wasn't acquainted with 'city living'.  
A week in Cleveland and she still wasn't used to it. She wasn't having much luck with her search, either. A locater spell had revealed that there were five new Slayers here in the city, but so far she hadn't been able to pin down one of them.  
She and Kennedy were, today, bound for the Jefferson Krieger Junior High School, where Willow was planning on applying for a job. It was two sided - the Watcher's job didn't pay shit, and she wanted to be able to observe the junior high with the largest student population in Cleveland.   
Willow was confident about the job - Jefferson Krieger had been advertising for a new tech teacher, and Willow still knew how to work a computer.  
She glanced at Kennedy. The young woman was still searching for a good place to get into Cleveland's world of teenagers - she was only 18, after all.  
"Thinking deep thoughts?" Kennedy asked. They turned a corner in the direction of the school.  
"Not really," Willow said. She sighed, then decided to ask. "Kennedy, how are things going with your assignment?"  
Kennedy frowned slightly. "Not too good, not too bad," she admitted. "I'm not really getting anywhere. I don't know...I'm not used to making a concerted effort to get into the popular circles."  
"Why is that?" Willow asked.  
Kennedy shrugged. "I never really needed popularity," she said. "I had a couple of friends...mostly I was a loner."  
Willow's face crinkled. There was something there...something... "Aha!" she said. Kennedy jumped.  
"You're looking for Slayers, Kennedy, girls like you," she said. "They're probably pretty confused about the whole thing by now. They'll be loners...not popularity contest winners."  
They rounded a corner and came into sight of Jefferson Krieger. It was fairly enormous - bigger than Willow had expected.  
"Wow," she said. "That's big...on a big sort of big scale, you know? Big."  
Kennedy smiled now. "Chill out, Willow. You'll be fine. You've done teaching before."  
Willow's anxiety faded, mostly because of the reassuring look on Kennedy's face. She nodded.  
"Okay," she said. "I helped save the world from unspeakable evil...I can get a job."  
Kennedy grinned. "I'll see you at four back the apartment," she said. She grew serious. "If anything comes up, I'll leave a message there."  
Willow nodded at her, and, making sure that no one was looking, quickly kissed Kennedy on the cheek. They parted.  
  
Kennedy wasn't entirely sure of where she was headed to; after a week, she'd uncovered only one teen hangout in fairly large city. The place was surprisingly clean; the kids seemed to make a concerted effort to keep it safe and drug free. It puzzled Kennedy; when she'd been younger, her friends had all tried their hardest to keep the local teen center infested with drugs.  
The Cleveland Teen Center was a small, squat building set back from the road about fifty feet. It was made of brick, some of which was covered in ivy, and it had old, grimy windows that were barred. The outside of the building looked terrible.  
Kennedy entered and, not for the first time, was astounded by just how clean the place was on the inside. For the second time, she entered to find kids cleaning. She paused. Silence met her ears.  
This was unusual. Kennedy had been going to the Center now for four days, and not once had the place been empty. Even in the mornings, the place always had a noisy population in, listening to music and playing pool. Now there was nothing.  
Kennedy crossed the threshold quickly and entered the main room. It was packed fairly tightly with kids, but they weren't at all happy. Some were talking, and there was a low buzzing that was undetectable from outside the room. Everyone looked up upon Kennedy's entrance, but they went back to whatever they were doing when they saw who she was.  
They were waiting for someone. That much was obvious. So, too, was the fact that they were all in formal wear.  
Kennedy attempted to blend, but her ratty jeans and tight black tank top were a bit out of place in the mess of collared shirts and dresses. She waited for a while; nothing happened. The conversations were too low for her to hear; and she didn't know what exactly to ask if she tried to engage anyone in conversation.  
Finally, when the oppressive vibe in the room got to be too much for Kennedy to take, she approached a girl leaning against a wall.  
"What's up?" Kennedy asked, in the same low tone everyone else was using.  
Before the girl could answer, the door opened and a boy entered. Kennedy had never seen the boy before, but it was obvious that he was the person whom the crow had been waiting for. They all stood at once. All the noise died away instantly.  
The boy looked around the room in bitter appraisal. "It's time," he said. "Lets go."  
The crowd slowly, solemnly filed past him. Caught up and unwilling to stay anyway, Kennedy passed him by. His gaze turned on her briefly, and she was chilled to the bone. There was fire in his eyes.  
Kennedy had to quickly remind herself that there was no way that this kid could ever take her. She was a Slayer, after all; he was just a kid, fifteen if she didn't miss her guess. But that anger seemed indomitable.  
The crowd walked down to the road and turned automatically, almost without thinking, to the left. They'd done this before. Kennedy followed at a distance, the back of the fiery eyed boy taking up most of her attention. She had never seen him around, and yet, all the Teen Center regulars seemed to know and respect him. Granted, she hadn't been around all that long, but still...  
The group turned another corner on autopilot. Kennedy was still wondering to herself where they were going when they turned in towards a cemetery.  
Oh, no, she thought. Someone died.  
Death was an enormous part of Kennedy's life these days. That came as no surprise, seeing as death pretty much came in the job description. But it was still unnerving. Kennedy firmly believed that it never got to be okay.  
Now she was really uncomfortable. She was underdressed for something like this. The kids were the only ones present at the burial; and as Kennedy looked around, she realized that all the dates on the tombstones were those that signified people who had died as teenagers.  
She considered drifting away, since she didn't want to seem disrespectful by showing up looking like a slob. But then she got a look at the body.  
There were two tiny wounds, painstakingly patched up, on his neck. They were hidden quite well, but Kennedy had seen what the aftermath of a vampire attack looked like many times; her eye was trained for this sort of thing.  
All at once, her entire attention went into the situation. The man was young; sixteen, perhaps. As Kennedy quickly examined him, she realized that he'd put up a fight. He was bruised in several locations, and there were tiny scratches that none but a Slayer would have been able to detect.  
The minister was beginning. "Michael Damon was a truly extraordinary young man..."  
Several of the girls began crying. Kennedy, subconsciously deciding to stay, gazed around at the girls. Could one of them perhaps be a Slayer?  
The minister went on. He'd delivered similar orations before; there was a practiced ease to the speech. It didn't lack pain; but it flowed in the same way the kids all had on the trip down.  
When it was over, the minister closed his book and turned to the body on in the coffin. He quietly said a personal prayer, then turned, shook the fiery eyed boy's hand, and departed.  
The kids stayed while the undertaker closed the coffin and lowered it into the ground. Fiery Eyes gazed around and, his mouth quivering with sadness, said, "Lets get back to the Center. Anyone who needs to stay longer, feel free to."  
Kennedy immediately slipped away. She wanted to be the first one back at the Center. She had a feeling that something was going to be said there, and she wanted to be in a position to catch every word.  
  
Willow walked through the door to the school and was greeted by the same old dilapidation that had infected the old Sunnydale High. It made her reminisce for a moment; despite the horrific death the old school had inflicted on several of her friends, she still missed it sometimes. Instinctive, she supposed. Some of her best times had come there, as well as some of her nightmarish times.  
She had chosen a sharp dress for the occasion, hoping to look intelligent and impressive. She carried with her the advertisement in the Cleveland Gazette.  
She headed straight for the main office. It was fairly easy to find; the school was well marked. The secretary at the main desk didn't seem too happy to see her, but she didn't seem to happy to be breathing, either.  
"Hello. You are....?" The secretary asked.  
"I'm Willow Rosenberg," Willow said. "I applied for the Technology Education teaching position, and I'm here for my interview."  
The secretary looked down at her schedule. "Okay. You can go right in, Ms. Rosenberg."  
She indicated a door at the opposite side of the office. Willow thanked the secretary, who seemed to have already forgotten her existence, and turned to the door. Amusingly enough, her nerves had disappeared.  
Willow pushed open the door and entered. The principal looked up as she entered. "Hello, Ms. Rosenberg," he said. "Its nice to see you here so promptly."  
Willow shrugged, grinning at the complement. "Well, I try," she said. The principal grinned.  
"That's good," he said. "Determination is something you definitely have to have in the education field. Though you already know that," he added. "You've taught before."  
Willow nodded. "I did some substituting in high school. That was for a computer course too, actually."  
The principal raised an eyebrow. "By in high school, what exactly do you mean?"  
Willow wondered whether or not this would help her. "I was a student when I did my substituting."  
Now both of the principals eyebrows were up. "That is quite extraordinary."  
Willow blushed. "Thank you. So, do you want to get on with the interviewing?"  
Now the principal grinned slightly sheepishly. "Actually, I didn't ask you here for an interview."  
Willow was instantly worried. These things were never good. "What did you invite me here for?"  
"To tell you that you got the job," he said. "No one else has applied for the position, and its been open for months and months. You were the first person to apply for the job, and your credentials all checked out immediately. Mr. Wood was certainly more than happy to provide us with the file on you. But he never mentioned that you'd been a student...incredible. There is just one thing that I wanted to know before welcoming you onboard.  
"Why Cleveland?" he finished.  
Willow had an answer prepared. "There's need," she said simply. "I like to help when I can, and these kids need a teacher. I figured that I could do some good here."  
The principal nodded. "I like you already, Ms. Rosenberg. Welcome to the staff of JK High."  
  
First chapter done! Yayness! That's not a word, right? Oh, well. I can't keep track of the number of words that Joss Whedon has created, so I think I'm safe with a single, pointless exclamation. What did y'all think? Leave me a review, if you don't mind. That way, I'll know what you think, and I can keep writing. No reviews...no rest of the story. Got it? Good. Peace. 


	2. Chapter 2

Kennedy slipped in through the front door. She was ahead of the rest of the group by maybe fifty feet, but she was still pretty sure that she'd avoided notice. Now, all she had to do was hide…

The door opened again. Kennedy dove behind the couch. Thirty kids filed in, flanked by Fiery Eyes. The bitter anger seemed to be coming off of him in waves now. The group came into the room slowly, but none of them settled in, or did anything other than stand where they were. Fiery Eyes crossed to the front of the room, by a door that led to what Kennedy presumed to be another area of the Center.

Fiery Eyes addressed the crowd. "What happened to Mike did not _need_ to happen," he said. "He was a good guy. We all knew him, and we all knew that he was willing to give his life for us, if it came to that. _It did not come to that_. From now on, hunting parties do _not_ engage vampires unless the odds are at least two to one in our favor."

"But Jonathan," one of the kids spoke up. "That'll limit us even more."

Jonathan turned his gaze to the kid who had spoken up. Though that terrible gaze didn't soften at all, it didn't seem as angry, if it seemed every bit as harsh. "I am not going to let anyone else die."

"Jon, you can't blame yourself for Mike's death," one of the females said. She seemed about to move to Jonathan's side, but stopped.

"If not me, than who?!" Jonathan yelled. His eyes flashed red. Kennedy's attention was caught entirely. That was not natural.

"Look," Jonathan said, regaining some semblance of calm. "We agreed that I would be the leader, right? You're going to follow orders, or all that we've worked to maintain falls apart. Do you get it?"

When no one responded, Jonathan's fire came back. "Do you get it?" he asked, louder this time.

Most of the kids nodded. "Fine," he said. He looked at them, then at the room. "Do something with yourselves," he said. "No hunting tonight."

He turned, already removing his tie, and went through the unknown door. Stealthily, so as to not attract attention, Kennedy got up from behind the couch and followed.

Going through the door, Kennedy found that the casual teen center atmosphere changed sharply to a utilitarian training room. Jonathan was busy attempting to destroy a punching bag even as Kennedy entered.

"Who are you?" Jonathan asked, without turning around.

"My name is Kennedy," Kennedy replied, wondering at once how he could help her and if he really fought vampires. "I'm here to help you."

To her surprise, Jonathan laughed. "You're going to help me?" he asked. He finally turned to survey her. "Hmm…you don't look tough enough to take on a group of elementary school brats. Do you have any idea how strong a vampire is?"

Kennedy wondered if blowing her cover was worth it. Before she could come to a decision, however, Jonathan had stepped forward. "Let me show you," he said.

Jonathan was faster and stronger than Kennedy had anticipated, but she was still able to block his blow. His left hook blocked, Jonathan reached in quickly for a left jab. It connected, but the blow was hardly very powerful. Kennedy stumbled a bit, but was still on her feet. Kennedy stepped up and attempted to deliver a midlevel kick to Jonathan's torso, but Jonathan, quick as lightning, grabbed her foot and twisted. Before she knew what, exactly, was happening, Kennedy was in the air and spinning. She landed on her hands and knees, hard.

Jonathan advanced on her, but Kennedy delivered a devastating uppercut to him that Jonathan had not expected. He stumbled back, tasting blood. He shook his head to clear it, then looked, dumbstruck, at Kennedy.

"What are you?" he asked, bluntly. Disbelief had begun to cloud over into a dark suspicion.

Kennedy considered then decided that she might as well tell him. "I'm a Slayer," she said, attempting to sound both proud and virtuous…whatever that was.

Jonathan surprised her again. "Fuck!" he said, loudly.

"What's wrong?" Kennedy asked. "You've heard of the Slayers before?"

Jonathan's fiery look of anger and bitterness was back. "Yeah, " he said, his voice loaded to the brim with sarcasm. "Yeah, I've known a few Slayers."

Kennedy's heart leapt at first, then, at his tone and the word choice, plummeted straight for the ground. She gulped. "You've known them…you don't _know_ t hem _now_?"

"No one knows them now," he said. "Let me show you."

Jonathan lead Kennedy to another door leading to another part of the Center. This door lead to a staircase – going down.

"Down here," Jonathan said.

At the foot of the staircase was a long hallway made entirely of brick. On either side of the somewhat narrow, dank corridor were cells. "You keep prisoners?" Kennedy asked.

"Something like that," Jonathan replied. He lead Kennedy to the end of the corridor, where three of the cells seemed different. Upon closer inspection, Kennedy realized that these cells were reinforced with steel and titanium.

"There," Jonathan said, pointing, and Kennedy gasped.

Inside each metal cage was a young girl. The insides of the cells were full of scratch marks and dents. The girls themselves were each barely dressed; their clothes had been torn to shreds. They seemed feral to Kennedy.

"Meet Sharon, Harriet, and Jane," Jonathan said. "Sharon was a part of my team. Nice girl, though she was always particularly talented at fighting. A couple months ago, she started experiencing…well, we weren't sure what was going on. She just kept saying one thing over and over in her sleep…"

Kennedy opened her mouth and started to say "Slayer", but Jonathan hushed her quickly. "Don't say it around them!" he said. "It's the only word any of them respond to anymore, and they respond violently."

Kennedy shut her mouth.

"Sharon started getting faster, stronger, more agile," Jonathan went on. "At first, it was nothing big. Then it got noticeable. She started taking on vampires alone. Then she started sneaking out at night. She became more and more of a disciplinary problem."

Kennedy waited, eying the three feral young women.

"Then, one day…I still don't know what, exactly, happened," Jonathan said, eying the cages bitterly. "She just sort of glowed for a second, then she hit me and ran off. I was the one who disciplined her, you see…when whatever happened happened, she must have felt stronger and bolder, she lashed out at me for that reason."

"When you say "disciplined"…" Kennedy began.

Jonathan's eyes were hard. "We do what we must to survive. A weak link in the group could bring us all down."

Kennedy swallowed her reply.

"We went out looking for Sharon, all of us," Jonathan said. "She was hard to track, but we've had a lot practice. When we found her, she was ripping up a store…I guess that all those weeks resenting my authority made her criminal, but who knows now?

"It took ten of us to hold her down. She fought tooth and nail, and in the process, killed two of my friends. That's when she let go completely, I think, but I can't be sure. Since that night…this has been all that's left."

Kennedy swallowed. "And the other two?"

Jonathan once again turned his eyes back to hers, and once again, the look there was terrifying. "I don't know the whole story in either case," he said. "But I remember seeing what was left. Harriet was in the care of the state, because of severe mental instability – she tried to kill her parents when she was four. She broke out the night Sharon ran off on us. She killed half a dozen people before we got to her…and Jane…Jane apparently had to watch her entire family get eaten. She didn't know anything about her powers, and was too scared to act. They got her whole family: mother, father, and kid brother, right before her eyes. Drove her crazy."

Kennedy was horrified. She tried not to show it, but doubted she was doing a very good job. "What have you done for them?" she asked, worry in her voice.

"Everything we can," Jonathan said. "Unfortunately, no one but us has the ability to store them; these cages are magical."

Kennedy was lost for words. "I'm…sorry," she said, aware of just how pathetic that was.

"Not nearly as sorry as I am," Jonathan said. "Now…what the hell are you doing in my city?"

Kennedy bit at her tongue a bit. "I told you," she said. "I came to help."

"And just how are you planning on doing _that_?" Jonathan asked, sarcasm dripping from his voice.

"Well…" Kennedy said, then decided that it was time to spew the whole story. "It's a bit complicated. Is there anywhere we can sit down?"

"Wow," Jonathan said. "That's…amazing."

"You believe me?" Kennedy asked.

"Honey, after all the things I've seen…First Evils and mad preachers and armies of vampires don't seem too farfetched," Jonathan said. "Still, I have an issue with you all activating all the Slayers in the world at once."

"Why?" Kennedy asked. "It was our only option."

"I realize that," Jonathan said. "But consider…we have three insane, super strong, super agile, super fast girls locked up downstairs…and this is just one city. What if it's like this everywhere?"

Kennedy hadn't thought of that. Now, as she did, a cold chill swept down her spine. "I mean, here alone, you gave incredible powers to an undisciplined vigilante, an unbalanced sociopath, and a girl with incredible trauma. What about the rest of the world? There are what, hundreds of girls with these powers now? And you have no way of supervising all of them?"

"We're in the process of locating them all," Kennedy said, weakly.

"And that's why you're here, isn't it?" Jonathan asked.

"Yes," Kennedy said.

"How many are there supposed to be in Cleveland?" Jonathan asked.

"We don't know," Kennedy said. "But we figured it would be two or three…you are on a Hellmouth, after all."

"A what?" Jonathan asked.

When Willow arrived home that day, at four, as promised, there was a message on the answering machine and no Kennedy. She hit the play button and listened.

"Will, you have to get down to the Cleveland Teen Center, right now. I found three Slayers here, and they're all in rough shape. They're in the care of…oh, I can't explain it all here, it's just _too_ complicated. Come on, quick. You know the address."

Willow was a bit alarmed by the urgency and excitement in Kennedy's voice. The young Slayer didn't usually get so worked. Grabbing her coat, Willow was out the door.

Several minutes later, she stood at the door of the Cleveland Teen Center. She knocked, and a voice came from the inside. "Who are you?" it asked.

"My name is Willow Rosenberg," Willow said. Before she had to think of a decent cover story, the voice replied.

"We've been waiting, Ms. Rosenberg," the voice said, and the door opened.

In the doorway stood Kennedy, with a tall young man with fiery eyes.

"Hello, Will," Kennedy said, considering sneaking a kiss and deciding quickly against it.

"Hey," Willow replied. "What's the big?"

"Found our Slayers," the young man said. "I'm Jonathan Banks, I'm in charge of things here."

"Nice to meet you," Willow said, despite the fact that she unable to look him in the eye.

"The pleasure is mine," Jonathan replied. "If you'll follow me, we have a lot to talk about."

Willow followed Jonathan through the Teen Center, avoiding the curious looks of the Cleveland teens. Kennedy walked beside Willow, looking a bit more at ease than her lover. They entered a kitchen that lay off the main room. Jonathan offered Kennedy and Willow drinks; they both declined, so he sat down empty handed.

"First of all," Jonathan said. "We have your Slayers. Three of them."

Willow breathed a sigh of relief. It looked like things might go easier than she'd expected.

"All three of them are terminally insane," Banks continued.

"Oh," Willow said, her face falling.

"For numerous reasons," Banks concluded, "I don't think there's any help for any of them."

Willow took a second to digest that. "Then we failed," she said, simply.

Before Jonathan could say anything further, a teen burst into the kitchen. "I asked not to be disturbed, Luke," he said, irritably.

"Jon, we just got word: the school is going to go ahead with the Graduation tomorrow night."

"God damn it!" Banks yelled, momentarily forgetting that he was entertaining guests and rising quickly, knocking over his chair. His eyes flashed red again, and both Kennedy and Willow caught it. "How many times do I have to paint a picture of what'll happen if they go through with this?"

"I don't know," the messenger said. "You'd think they'd have figured it out by now."

"Apparently they're just dumb asses," Jonathan said, seething. "And the worst part is…we still have to save their dumb assess."

The messenger ducked back out.

"Congratulations," Jonathan said, turning back to Willow and Kennedy. "You arrived just in time for the biggest massacre in Cleveland's history."

I know, I know…this took TOO long to come out. But the rest is coming, eventually, mostly because I know where I want this story to go, and I want it finished. Well, anyway, see you all in the future, and please, R&R. Bye.


	3. Chapter 3

"Massacre?" Kennedy asked, alarmed.

"Yeah, massacre," Jonathan said. "Fucking idiots!" he yelled, punching through a cabinet, sending shards of wood flying everywhere. His eyes flashed again.

"What are you talking about?" Kennedy probed, gently.

"The Jefferson Krieger graduation," Jonathan replied. "Any gathering of virgins that large? I know that Cleveland teens make a lot of noise about their sexploits, but trust me, none of them are serious. The vampires will be all over that graduation like flies on shit."

"Why are they having it at night?" Willow asked.

"Because they're fools!" Jonathan burst out. "I talked to the principal. He said that they're tired of restricting themselves just because Cleveland is "special". They want just one night of normalcy. They want it so badly that they're willing to die for it."

"That's…understandable," Kennedy said, empathizing with those involved with the school. Willow nodded. Their time spent camped out with the other Slayers in Buffy's house had caused all concerned to yearn for normality.

"Understandable my ass!" Jonathan yelled. "Okay…okay…" Jonathan began breathing heavily, trying to calm himself down. "All right…I'm calm…I'm not going to kill them for being so stupid…I'm going to save them…"

Willow shot a look at Kennedy. The message was unmistakable. _He's crazy_.

Jonathan looked up at the duo. "Well…I need to get to work…now. Care to join me? We can discuss the future of your Slayers."

Kennedy nodded. "Yeah, we'll help," she said.

Jonathan was the first to come out of the room into the larger hall. The various members of his group were scattered around the room, playing pool, reading, playing cards, and generally lounging. "Can I have your attention?" Jonathan said, and the room went instantly quiet. "You may already know this, but…the JK graduation is going to go on tomorrow night, as they said they would.

"As you know, it's likely to end up a bloodbath. Which means that we're going to need to be there to stop that from happening. This is going to be big, folks – bigger than we've ever handled ourselves. We're going to need weaponry and we're going to need supplies, and more than anything else, we're going to need _balls_. Got that? This is as close to hell as you'll ever want to get."

A girl spoke up from the back of the room. "So soon after we lost Mike –" she began, but Jonathan cut her off.

"I know that it's soon," he said, his voice softening ever so slightly. "I understand that you're all still upset. I'm still upset too. But we have to get over it, or else more people are going to die. Got it?"

There was a murmur of assent. Jonathan nodded. "Okay, then," he said. "Let's get to work."

The group broke up and headed in all different directions, with purpose. Jonathan addressed Kennedy. "Come with me, you two. We have some heavy lifting to do."

Jonathan lead Kennedy and Willow outside and around to the back of the building. There sat an old school bus that looked as though it had been abandoned long before any of them had been born. Jonathan opened the back door of the bus, then indicated a locked storage shed. "Some of the bigger weapons are in there," he said. "I need your help to move them."

"Okay," Kennedy said. She followed Jonathan to the shed while Willow watched. Jonathan unlocked the shed and, entering it, heaved a large crate onto his shoulder. He watched as Kennedy effortlessly picked up another crate.

"You know, I could have enjoyed having a Slayer around," Jonathan said.

"We've only run across one other case of a Slayer out of control," Kennedy said as they hauled the crates over to the bus. "It's hard to believe that there would be three more in one place."

"Cleveland is special," Jonathan said, bitterly. "Very special."

"Sounds like you hate it here," Willow said, as the two haulers set down their freight inside the bus.

"Can't say it's my favorite place in the world," Jonathan said. "But then again, I've never been very far away from Cleveland, so I wouldn't know about the rest of the world."

"Why stay?" Kennedy asked. "I mean, you're obviously gifted. What's keeping you here?" They returned to the shed for more crates.

"The group," Jonathan said, simply. "I'm their leader. I can't just abandon them. They trust me. They've trusted me since…" he trailed off and shot Kennedy a furtive look.

"Since…what?" Kennedy asked.

"Oh, nothing," Jonathan said, far too quickly.

"I know there's something; I can hear it in your voice," Kennedy said.

Jonathan regarded Kennedy for a long moment. "Since our parents died," he said.

Kennedy put her box down, intrigued and troubled at the same time. "Your parents died? All your parents died? Is this some sort of orphanage?"

Jonathan laughed, hollowly. "That's not how it started, but I suppose that's what it became," he said. "This has only been the "Cleveland Teen Center" for about two years now. Before that, it was Ridley's Charter Club, which was a clever little front for a society of mages.

"Our parents were all members of the society. They went out every night to defend the city from vampires and other demons and to keep our Hellmouth from getting to upset. The society's been around for longer than Cleveland – people have been here a lot longer than the history books would like you to think." Jonathan grinned, lopsidedly, the fire in his eyes ever present. "It's a tradition of sorts, I guess."

"What happened?" Kennedy asked.

"Well, a couple years ago, Cleveland had a little problem with sporzadic demons. Flesh eaters. The society – our parents, who'd never let any of us, save me, out on patrol – went to deal with them…and every single one of them was slaughtered."

"That's awful," Willow said, having joined the conversation moments earlier.

"We were left alone," Jonathan continued. "We had no idea what to do, so we sat here, waiting to see what would happen next. And the demons showed up – in force. There must have been a couple hundred of them, at least. I went out to meet them, to die on my feet, and one of them took a bite out of me." He rolled up his right sleeve, revealing a nasty scar on this shoulder. "He spit it out. Turns out they're allergic to children. Go figure, huh?"

"Yeah…go figure," Kennedy said. "What then?"

"We all met and decided to go on doing what our parents had been doing for years," Jonathan said. "It would only have been another couple years for most of us before we would have joined the society, anyway. We figured that we could handle it a little early."

"Looks like you've handled yourselves pretty good," Willow offered.

"Thanks," Jonathan said. "But things haven't gone smoothly at all. I've lost too many of them…"

"How'd you get to be the leader?" Kennedy asked, shouldering her burden once more.

Jonathan laughed, with mirth this time. "Hahaha…that," he said. "Well, by now you've probably noticed that I'm not entirely human."

Neither Willow nor Kennedy said a word, so Jonathan continued. "That demon bite changed me somehow," he said. "I don't know how. We looked it up and those things have some sort of venom that they use to kill their prey. I guess it's geared for adults, because instead of killing me, it made me…well…stronger and faster, for starters."

"That still doesn't explain how you got be the leader," Willow said.

Jonathan nodded with appreciation. "That was quick," he said. "Well, it just sort of happened naturally, over time. We needed a leader and I filled the role more often than not, so I became the unofficial leader. We don't really have the time for ceremonies usually…the only ceremonies we make time for are burials."

Jonathan's good mood seemed gone. "We need to get this stuff loaded," he said. He and Kennedy returned to the work, in silence now.

Jonathan proved an adept driver. Willow and Kennedy rode near the front with him, as several of his peers sat throughout the back, making sure the crates of weapons didn't jar around too much.

"We can stash the weapons on the football field," Jonathan said. He pulled the bus up alongside the field. "Come on, quick, before it gets too dark."

The teens got to work fast. Before too long, the weapons crates were safely stashed on the outskirts of the football field. Jonathan surveyed the work and muttered to himself, softly. Kennedy, with her enhanced hearing, was the only one to hear him. "I only wish we didn't have to use them," he said.

Silently, she agreed.

Willow and Kennedy got back to their apartment just as darkness was falling. Willow sat down heavily in a chair and breathed long and hard. Kennedy sat more softly on the edge of their bed.

"Yesterday, all we had to do was find a couple, three girls," Willow said. "Now look what we've got ourselves into."

"It's still our job," Kennedy pointed out. "Saving innocents, that is."

"I know that," Willow said. "Still…this doesn't feel right at all. We're rushing things and we're bound to have overlooked something. Something like…"

"How far can we trust this Jonathan Banks?" Kennedy finished.

"Yeah, for starters," Willow said. The ceiling swirled grey, but Willow didn't notice.

"Careful Will," Kennedy said, attempting to be light. "If you're not careful, it's gonna start raining in here."

Willow glanced up but didn't deign to stop her mood magic. Seeing that Willow was in need of cheer Kennedy, a devious grin upon her face, rose from her seat on the bed and pulled Willow back to it, with her…

Soon, the swirling grey was shooting with brighter, sharper, more vibrant colors.

The day came and the day went…and the night began.


End file.
